What Do You Do?

 With small acreages hard to come by & both of us ready to enjoy life in town - what do we do?  We decide to pay to board Farah.  Starting out with a stall in the barn - our mare was gaining weight & certainly not getting enough exercise.  She made friends with the horse next to her & seems totally relaxed & comfortable.  Since we've been busy with the remodel of our new-to-us home - my ride time has been limited & the holidays are upon us.

Hard at it :-)

Now that a run has opened up - with a place inside to get out of the weather - we decided we'd move Farah from the stall this afternoon.  Horse ownership in Iowa is somewhat different than it was in Washington.  Horses here are definitely treated more as livestock & not pampered to the extent most of the horses in WA are.  I - of course - have pampered the gold girl for many years & it's been tough to not be able to walk out my door & see her.

When we arrived today to check out the run - we found it needed a lot of clean-up work.  Nothing like paying to do - what we used to do for free :-)  I'd gotten carried away last week & decided to do some cleaning in the feed room.  I left it way better than I'd found it - but hadn't carried off all the trash.  Today - the trash was gone!  I think the young couple in charge of feeding & cleaning the barn removed it.  I also did some sweeping & cleaning in the tack room.  I think this means I'm actually missing barn chores!

Farah on the move!

Farah seemed thrilled to be out again!  She hit the enclosure at a full trot & in seconds had taken down the lower line of rope hot wire - managing to wrap her tail around it & then drag it around the tree!  Butch was Not happy!  We could find no insulators, so my husband had to adapt the broken ones with baling twine & electrical tape.  Since the poor gelding on that side had been put in his place...  She started checking out the gelding on the other side - at least that didn't result in any more damage!

Checking out the view~

By the time we had her feed bag & grain bucket in place, she'd finally calmed down.  She stood at the top of the hill - looking out over the countryside.  Such a different view from the one she was used to.  Hopefully, she'll like being out better than being in!  I do not want to end up with fat mare :-)  After all - there's got to enough riding trails to keep us busy next season :-)